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Relief for North Carolina following Hurricane Helene continues, with Suffolk continuing to join in the cause.

Two local organizations, LandWerks Contracting and Hampton Roads Helicopters, have been participating in providing help to NC residents following the hurricane’s devastation. During two separate Thursday, Oct. 3 interviews, LandWerks Contracting Vice President Tiffany Butler and Mitchell Hynes both talked about their work in providing assistance to NC residents. On LandWerks’ end, Butler says they have been in contact with a contractor 10 minutes outside of Asheville.

“He is about 10 miles out of that area in an area called Weaverville, and that’s where he lives, and he operates his business and we do similar types of work, and that’s how we kind of know each other just through the industry circle and so, my husband has been in contact with him,” Butler said. “We have personally donated some funds towards just some essentials and in further conversation, we were like, ‘What can we [do to] help as a company?’ and so obviously, there are roads that are closed due to landslides, dirt and debris and trees that have fallen.”

Her husband, LandWerks Owner and President Stephen Butler along with four employees also visited Weaverville and Asheville, NC on Friday, Oct. 4 to donate non-perishable foods and various essential items provided by Southside Baptist Church and their fellow church members.

“So we have filled the back of the dump truck up with items like that, and we’re taking several pieces of our heavy equipment, excavators, skid steer, our dump truck, and our crew will have chainsaws and stuff. And so, we’re really just working on opening up some roads so that other people can come through with relief, as well as getting trees off of people’s homes so that they safely get inside and get anything that can be recovered,” Butler said. “A lot of people, their homes are okay, but they’re not accessible because the culvert pipes near their roadway that would lead into their driveways and stuff are completely washed out. So we’re going to be doing some culvert pipe installation there so that they can access their homes, just things like that.”

A Christian couple, Butler says they try to be “the hands and feet of Jesus when they can.”

“You can’t turn a blind eye, no matter who the people are, what they’re going through. We’ve been so blessed – personally, business wise – and so we just want to give back,” Butler said.

Butler reflected on their first time providing disaster relief in Albany, Georgia back in 2017.

“That experience, that was the first time that we had done some type of disaster relief. And it’s amazing you go to serve and bless others, but what you get in return is way more than you could ever give, just being able to bear someone else’s burden,” she said. “Many hands make the load lighter, and it’s just, it’s so beautiful to see full circle.”

Hampton Roads Helicopters Lead Helicopter Instructor Mitchell Hynes reflected on his experience on providing relief to NC residents affected by the hurricane. He detailed flying out Monday morning on Sept. 30 where he conducted missions throughout the afternoon.

“We flew all through into Monday evening, all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, and then the first half of the day today, Thursday…,” Hynes said. “We did quite a few different things when we were there working for Operation AirDrop. It’s a civilian organization of pilots and volunteers that essentially have gotten together to help deliver supplies, move people and just overall, provide relief for the victims of Hurricane Helene, especially in the western NC area,” Hynes said.

On taking part, Hynes saw people organizing efforts online, noting civilian pilot organizations getting involved during situations such as this. 

“And it was actually a link from AOPA…the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a big online organization that just does aviation stuff in general, but they had posted the link to Operation Airdrop’s website,” he said. “And so, when I got in touch then on Operation Airdrop’s website and looked at what they were doing and we decided it was something that we really wanted to help out with. And we had a helicopter available. I was available, and so that’s when I went out Monday.”

Hynes described what he saw while providing relief.

“There were quite a few areas of just, absolute destruction out there, in some spots…,” Hynes reflected. “You’d see one community where from the air, things may look totally normal, but then you get to the next community just one valley over and it would be totally decimated: buildings completely knocked over, roads wiped out, new rivers flowing where they didn’t before, huge fields of trees just totally knocked over by wind. There [were] so many areas that we flew into that were essentially from the ground – completely cut off – either because the roads had been washed out, or because they were still covered in water.” 

He also reflected on the people he saw during his visit.

“…the people that we talked to, of course, they were usually pretty relieved when we showed up, but you could tell there was a lot of folks that were really trying to band together to help each other as much as they could,” he said. “I saw quite a few instances of people in what were very clearly not, you know, government owned or operated vehicles trying to clear out roads or help move space to different places or equipment from construction companies or other local organizations that weren’t affiliated with, traditionally, disaster relief efforts, but helping things out. I saw one bulldozer cleaning out a road that was just from some local construction company, that kind of thing.”

Hynes also detailed receiving a “large amount” of Starlink units, which provided internet access to the cutoff communities, which he called “a huge, huge benefit” to the relief effort.

“Many of them were in valleys where cell service was terrible and their landline internet was down, and we would land at local fire departments who had gas generators set up these Starlink units, and that would get these fire departments hooked back up to the internet for the first time, sometimes in days,” he said. “Oftentimes we would land there, and they would have no idea we were even coming because nobody would have any way to contact them. And we’d show up, get them this internet going, and they were able to make contact back outside to then coordinate more supplies coming in, tell people if they have urgent medical needs, that kind of thing.”

Hynes continued.

“They were set up in such a way that whenever we had them in a brand new box, never-opened unit, literally all we had to do was connect them to power and then about five minutes later, there’d be a working Wi-Fi network. It was like magic…,” Hynes said.

Hynes commended the volunteers for their work in the relief efforts, noting many people coming out to support, regardless of the area being their local community or not.

“We had people from all over the place that were showing up at the Hickory Airport where we were based and doing all kinds of work. And even there, I only saw part of the operations because we were based at the Hickory Airport, but there [were] operations happening at the Concord Airport…and all kinds of other places,” he said. “So to the extent that I even saw the community helping, there’s only a small slice of what’s really going on.”

For those wanting to support, Butler detailed donation procedures, with products being dropped at their office at business hours: Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“At some point next week, I personally will be making a second trip just to kind of take more supplies down. If people donated between now and then, I’ll certainly get it down there. Anybody who wants to donate monetarily can contact me personally and we can get those funds to our contact that’s there on the ground,” Butler said. “There are several organizations, local churches and stuff that are there that have said money can be filtered through them…and of course, American Red Cross, FEMA, all of those national resources are always good go-tos if people don’t feel comfortable giving to a privately owned company or a religious organization, whatever their belief systems are, those routes are obviously available as well.”

For more information about LandWerks and Hampton Roads Helicopters, go to landwerkscontracting.com and hrheli.com.